updated 06:03 am EDT, Tue April 2, 2013

Piracy fails to 'negatively impact DVD sales' of Game of Thrones

Game of Thrones may retain its crown of being the most pirated television show, based on reports. Despite the number of downloads of the season premiere entering the millions within 24 hours of its first broadcast, the programming president of HBO appears to be taking the dubious accolade as a compliment.

Speaking toEntertainment Weekly, Michael Lombardo called the rampant piracy of the show "a compliment of sorts," continuing "The demand is there. And it certainly didn't negatively impact the DVD sales." Lombardo also mentioned that piracy is "something that comes along with having a wildly successful show on a subscription network."

One of his main concerns over the piracy is that viewers of the pirated content may not be watching a high-quality copy of the show itself. "The production values of this show are so incredible. So I'm hoping that in the purloined different generation of cuts that the show is holding up," stated Lombardo. Though HBO is against piracy, Lombardo seems to be lenient towards casual pirates, claiming "No, we haven't sent out the Game of Thrones police."

Figures discovered byTorrent Freak suggests the opening episode had over 160,000 simultaneous peers on one single torrent, and has been downloaded more than one million times already. The 160,000 peers breaks a previous record for the largest BitTorrent swarm, held by the season premiere of Heroes with a total of 144,000 peers in a swarm.

Even though HBO has a considerably successful cable channel, it has looked towards possibly expanding its on-demand offering, HBO GO, to users without a subscription. An estimated $10 to $15 pricetag has been suggested for such a service, but considering the fact that cable companies provide a significant chunk of revenue for the channel, it would be difficult to turn away such a sizable source of funds.